James Clerk Maxwell: his journey to Italy; and the first color photograph

In this issue, in place of a featured contribution by some pre-eminent historian of science, this corner will host a brief communication on a less-known contribution of James Clerk Maxwell, who shares with Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, and Albert Einstein, the position of maximum scholar of physics in the modern age. Nevertheless, to common people he is almost unknown, unlike the other three. This can be due to several facts. First, he was a forerunner of theoretical physics, in a period in which physics was mainly experimental. Second, his incapacity in promoting himself, something at which Einstein and Newton, for example, were very good. This implies that many of his contributions are nowadays forgotten, such as, for example, his color theory, which lead in 1861 to the first color photograph.